Canada votes to elect Parliament

The election is expected to drive the Liberal Party from power and nudge the country to the right with a new Conservative Govt.

Canadians vote on Monday in an election expected to drive the scandal-smeared Liberal Party from power after 12 dominant years, and nudge the country to the right with a new Conservative-led government.

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Stephen Harper, the 46-year-old Conservative leader, is pledging to cleanse government in Ottawa and mend strained relations with the US.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin, 67, desperate for a miraculous comeback to confound polls in which he trails badly, has branded Harper an "extremist" closer to US arch conservatives than socially moderate Canadians.

Voting for 23 million eligible Canadians begins on Monday at 17:30 IST in easternmost Atlantic coast districts in Newfoundland and Labrador and ends on Tuesday on the Pacific seaboard.

After seven weeks of jarring rhetoric, party leaders criss-crossed the vast country on Sunday to close the campaign -- held unusually in Canada's savage winter -- after the Liberal-led minority government folded in November.

Harper, a former academic who smoothed a once abrasive image and tracked to the centre in a tightly disciplined campaign, basked in opinion polls which gave him a 10-point lead over Martin -- enough for a minority government.

Conservatives, historically strong out west, hoped for inroads into Liberal strongholds in Ontario, and to eke out a few seats in Quebec.

The final poll of the campaign by Strategic Counsel for CTV television and the Globe and Mail newspaper yesterday night gave the Conservatives 37 per cent of the likely vote, and the Liberals 27 per cent.